11 Stomach-Churning Cases Involving Poisoning

Poisoning, long considered the murder weapon of choice for women, is also the source of some of the most tragic murders. Both historically and in modern times, poison has been a popular choice for murderers - and a particularly creepy one. Maybe it's the idea that the victim blindly ingests the weapon themselves, or maybe it's because poisoning is almost always committed by someone close to the victim. Maybe it's just the idea of something attacking your body from the inside. 

There are plenty of poison murders - some were committed by serial killers who used poison, while other were just a one-time crime. In every case, one of the worst parts of a gruesome poisoning is how it affects the victim. Convulsions, vomiting, rashes, and even hallucinations and paralysis mean poisoning is not a pretty way to die. But often, these confusing symptoms also mean that poisoning cases appear at first to be just mysterious illnesses, and too many times there is a delay before authorities even know a killer is at work.

Here are some of the most gruesome and nastiest poisonings throughout history, because if regular old murder isn't enough, a hotel designed just for murder should keep you up and scared for the foreseeable future. 

To say nurse Genene Jones had a need for attention is an understatement. She injected infants and children with digoxin, heparin and later, succinylcholine in order to put them into a medical crises, the idea being that she would then come to the rescue and save the day. Of course, the problem was that in many cases, she didn't.

The number of children that died in her attempt to show off is unknown, but estimated to be as many as 46.  She was eventually charged with killing 15-month-old Chelsea McClellan with succinylcholine and for almost killing Rolando Santos with heparin. Due to misplaced (and maybe even destroyed) hospital records, we'll never know how many children she poisoned and put into medical shock. Or killed. 

If you've ever thought you can't get too much of a good thing, an encounter with Gilbert Paul Jordan would be sure to change that. The "Boozing Barber" was a Canadian serial killer who hunted Aboriginal women in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, many of whom were prostitutes. He would meet women and pay them for sex or buy their drinks, encouraging them to keep drinking until they passed out.

But he didn't stop there. He would continue to pour liquor down their throats while they were unconscious. Because the resulting death was deemed alcohol poisoning and therefore unsuspicious, it took a while for authorities to catch on. 

When they finally did, he was charged with manslaughter, though he was suspected of many other deaths. As if the story isn't creepy enough, court reports showed that police had been listening outside of his hotel room and heard him saying to a woman:

Have a drink, down the hatch baby, 20 bucks if you drink it right down; see if you're a real woman; finish that drink, finish that drink, down the hatch hurry, right down; you need another drink, I'll give you 50 bucks if you can take it; I'll give you 10, 20, 50 dollars, whatever you want, come on I want to see you get it all down; you get it right down, I'll give you the 50 bucks and the 13 bucks; I'll give you 50 bucks. I told you that. If you finish that I'll give you $75; finish your drink...

Doctor, con artist, bigamist, and of course, serial poisoner, H. H. Holmes definitely qualifies as an all-around bad guy - and one of the earliest serial killers on record. The guy built a hotel for murder, which is both terrifying and a baller move. How many murders he committed is unknown; he confessed to nearly 30 - nine of which were confirmed - but some estimate it could be nearly 200. 

The upper two floors of his hotel were a terrifying labyrinth of stairs to nowhere and death rooms. Not only were various bottles of poison found on the premises, some of the rooms were fitted with gas lines, meaning he could asphyxiate his victims through gas poisoning whenever he pleased. Other victims were cut off from air and left to suffocate, while some died of hunger and thirst. As if that's not sickening enough, he also had lime pits to dispose of the bodies, furnaces to incinerate them, and stretching racks for... well, you can guess. 

You've probably heard of Stanford University, but you might not be so familiar with the mysterious death surrounding one of its founders. In 1904, the university co-founder Jane Stanford escaped poisoning when she thought her mineral water tasted off and she immediately vomited it out. Sure enough, testing found that it had been poisoned with strychnine.

But the story wasn't over. The next month in Hawaii, she asked for a bicarbonate soda after suffering from an upset stomach. Soon she was screaming that she had been poisoned again. She was right. The poison caused her to lose control of her body completely and spasm until she died, all the while having to deal with knowing she was poisoned. 

While a lot of theories have surrounded her death, the killer remains a mystery. 

The first emperor of unified China, Qin Shi Huang, did a lot of very memorable things, but his death makes for a particularly interesting and gruesome story. Obsessed with finding the secret to immortality, Qin Shi Huang had doctors and scientists of the court make him a pill that would help him live forever. That pill promptly killed him. The reason? It was filled with mercury.

Although it was not done on purpose, the irony of poisoning yourself to death while search for immortality (as well as the stinging, muscle weakness, peripheral vision loss, and impaired speech associated with mercury poisoning) make this a truly tragic and gruesome tale.

When Charles Dickens calls you "the greatest villain that ever stood in the Old Bailey [a prison in London]," you know you've done something truly dastardly. And William Palmer did a lot of horrible things. While he was convicted in 1855 for the murder of his friend John Cook by strychnine poisoning, it was his suspected murders that were perhaps even more tragic. Not only was he suspected of poisoning his wife, his brother, and his mother-in-law, all four of his children died before their first birthday. The cause? Convulsions, technically, but many suspected he had poisoned each and every one of the helpless infants. Talk about nasty.

Apparently before he was hanged he looked at the trapdoor and said "Are you sure it's safe?" 

His likeness appeared in Madame Tussaud's until 1979. 

When it comes to the horrific side effects of poisoning, Zhe Ling had them all - except, of course, death. In 1994, Ling, a university student in China, started losing her hair, suffering blurred vision, and having horrible stomach pains before falling into a coma. Her friends shared the symptoms on the Internet, where the public replied with suspicions of thallium poisoning, suspicions later confirmed by doctors.

Though she lived, she suffered significant neurological damage: the poisoning left her unable to speak and partially paralyzed. The poisoner was never found, but her roommate Sun Wei was considered the prime suspect. 

Francisca Ballesteros's killings spread over 14 years, in a bone-chilling story of a killer biding her time. In 1990, she killed her five-month-old daughter by poisoning her with Colme, a drug intended to help treat alcoholism. She planned to kill the rest of her family, but nothing happened for 14 years. 

Finally, she decided she wanted to run away and join a man she met on the Internet, so she killed her husband and other daughter with a combination of Colme and sedatives. She attempted to kill her 12-year-old son in the same way, but he was admitted to the hospital and survived. She finally confessed to all of the murders.

The most chilling part of this story is the idea that she more than ten years knowing she had killed her daughter and just waiting to kill again.

George Bodle sat down to his morning coffee one day in 1833, and his wife had some, too. The grounds were then re-boiled to make a new batch of coffee that was served to the three women who worked in the household. The grounds were then given to the charwoman's daughter, Mary, who would normally boil them yet again to provide her seven children with a drink. Luckily, Mary thought they looked off that day. They were. 

Everyone who drank the coffee suffered convulsions and vomiting. Only Bodle, who had consumed the most coffee, died. The others were just wracked with illness. Bodle's grandson, John Bodle, was accused and acquitted of the murder. Later, he admitted that he had indeed killed his grandfather, and he sold his story to the press. 

This murder-suicide pact gone wrong shook Quebec in 2008. On New Year's Eve, Cathie Guathier and her husband Marc Laliberté poisoned their three children with a mixture of Gravol (dimenhydrinate, a medicine used for motion sickness) and a tranquilizer. Dimenhydrinate poisoning results in agitation, convulsions, rapid heart rate, and hallucinations, so you can see why they needed the sedative. 

That would be tragic enough, but it gets stranger. While Laliberté slit his wrists and died of blood loss, Gauthier called the police after slitting just one wrist. She tried to claim the entire thing had been her husband's plan but, as she had bought the medicine that poisoned her children, she was found guilty of murder and given a life sentence.